Outside Yosemite

Snow Plant at Nelder Grove

I'm way behind on this little journal so before I post about some recent past adventures I'm going to post one on recent visits to the Nelder Grove area or the Sierra National Forest.

For those who not familiar with this area it's about 12 miles outside the south entrance to Yosemite. Off these dirt roads are some beautiful forest campgrounds and trails. One of my favorites is the "Shadow of the Giants". A one mile loop that takes through a mixed forest of beautiful dogwoods, cedars, pines, and ancient giant sequoia trees. Some of these trees are way over a thousand years old.

Nearby Nelder Grove also has giant sequoias and was once an area where they sadly logged this incredible trees for fence posts and toothpicks. How sad is that?

At Nelder you'll see many giant stumps that sit scattered like huge tombstone reminders of how thoughtless man can be. Fortunately these rare trees are now protected.

It's impossible to do justice to these amazing giants in pictures. You really need to see them up close to realize just how huge they are. On my last visit Friday 5/25 it started to snow on us. Fortunately it was the kind of fake Hollywood looking snow that was real light and resembled tiny balls of Styrofoam. You can see it in the above pics of the snow plant and the giant stump. To give you and idea of how big that stump is, my head would come up to the bottom third of it. We're talking huge! Not my head the stump. Well I do have a fairly big noggin.

The week earlier I was up there painting with some plein air painters. I'll post that pic in a painting blog.